It is the little things…

I write that it is a little thing, but do you ever think about the bed that you sleep in every night? Have you ever not had a bed? In my entire life I have never not had a bed to sleep in. I know that I should never take that for granted. The work we do and the people the Lord has put into our lives, make us realize that having a little thing like a bed is not a guarantee. A bed is a blessing, not everyone has one. Have you ever thought about that?

Just a couple of weeks ago we had a group of athletes from Ohio State University down, led by Harry Miller and Mission for Nicaragua. Some crazy airline cancellations cut the team in half, the trip down then detoured through Coast Rica and ended with crossing the border by land…it was a wild adventure to get here! But in the end Kaitlyn, Harry, Big Jack and Little Jack (he is bigger than big Jack) made it down, Praise the Lord! When they visited Club Esperanza we had the funniest experience. All the kids asked if they could take pictures of them…it is usually the opposite where we are getting fun photos of all our new friends. But, they were impressed at how big the team was and thought Harry was Thor…so they were just taking pictures of us! Of course we entertained them making for some fun laughs, and then got a picture together at the end.

It is so fun to just visit, spend some time together and build relationship with the kids we do ministry with on an ongoing basis. These are relationships that can last a lifetime. But this team also had a great blessing to bring. They brought beds.

As I said at the beginning most of us do not think about having a bed to sleep on every night, it is almost a gaurantee. But the families we minister to down here in Nicaragua often make due with sleeping on the floor with old mattresses or cushions. Sometimes in the worst situations, children end up having to sleep on card board boxes to soften the concrete. You can see in this photo above one of the families had their make shift bed out…they didn’t want pity when they showed it to us. It was actually a moment of great joy for them, they said “look, that is what we used to sleep on, we want to show you so you know how thankful we are to you for giving us a new bed today for our family!” It can be a bit overwhelming, as you might imagine. But if you don’t step into the hardest situations, you can’t make an impact.

It is a special time when families invite you into their home. Even though we were delivering beds we still made sure to take time to visit together. We brought Bibles for each family that we visited that day. There were lots of smiles and laughs…and the kids liked to sit at the windows as the team worked and watch Thor swing the hammer! As we left every home we knew we had brought a sweet blessing to them, but we didn’t want to just leave it at that. We made sure to pray for each family and each child that would be sleeping in their new bed. It was a sweet time and we treasure in our hearts that this time sweating and working and blessing these families is something that honors the Lord and we know it is pointing people to Jesus…the biggest blessing any of us can have is eternal life, and we thank Jesus for that!

We really appreciated them pushing through and making it down to Nicaragua. Travel has been difficult if not impossible for a couple years now, but month after month things are getting easier. So we hope to have more friends down to help in the coming months. It is such a joy to serve the Lord together!

You Ohio State folks are awesome and we sure hope to have you down again!

God Bless!

Chachi….for all of our Open Hearts gang!

If you would like to donate to our ongoing ministry at Club Esperanza or any other part of our ministry you can click here to follow a link for info to donate by check OR you can click one of the donate buttons above.

Our ministries here in Nicaragua operate year round, so we also hope you would consider setting up a recurring donation through Paypal or National Christian Foundation to make a year round impact. Thank you!